I just wanted to offer a quick hello and let you know that Shady Grove kids (and Wissahickon Middle School kids) are continuing to push for Big Nate in the Philadelphia Inquirer. We made sure we had a "get out the vote" effort through an email blast and letters home to our original 50 letter writers when Big Nate became one of the "Show Down" nominees.

We are hoping to see Big Nate in the final Show Down soon. And we'll be sure to vote again. In the meantime, my students are going crazy over On a Roll - I have a few copies that I can't keep in the reading room. It's getting checked out constantly - and these are reluctant readers, you know. I thought it was great, too!

Attached is a photo of our Don't Wait, Read Big Nate board outside my room. You can see that we've already done a fun math activity with Nate and that I post strips for passers-by to enjoy.

Longtime readers of Frazz know that precocious student Caulfield likes to dress up as a literary figure for Halloween. His oblique hints at his costume and his teacher's muddleheaded attempts to guess the nature of his holiday garb have become a cherished part of the run-up to every dorky goth-kid and sexy cat's favorite night.

This year, we think creator Jef Mallett has made it too easy. Frazz's "frosty" comment must mean that Caulfield will be appearing as beloved cinematic snowman "Jack Frost" (either the psychotic one, or the less homicidal, more sadly paternal version in the Michael Keaton remake). Now, the more annoying among you will object that said snowman is a creature of the silver screen, not the golden page. Well to that, we rebut: have you read the novelization by Alan Dean Foster (probably)? Well, neither have we, but we're sure it's a rip-snorting good yarn.

Meanwhile, if anyone's curious, this year I will be delighting my new GoComics co-workers by dressing as Bill Cosby's Ghost Dad.

I rather enjoyed seeing this announcement at my children's school this morning. Once you make the book fair poster, the only place to go from there is Nobel Prize, a Cabinet position or an England Dan & John Ford Coley concert.

Richard C. Thompson (the 'C' doesn't stand for Cul De Sac, but maybe it should) will lecture at the Corcoran Museum on Tuesday, November 1, 2011. He'll regale you with tales from the front lines of cartooning and if the mood strikes him, he may even give you his patented 8-point plan for buying real estate at rock bottom prices and flipping them at a "100% awesome" profit to you.

If you've been reading Luann over the last couple of months, you're aware that Brad has been going through some tough times, getting laid off from his firefighter job and working at Weenieworld until he can land something better. As if slinging weenies isn't demeaning enough, Brad's boss, the incredibly domineering and terrifyingly inconsistent Ann Eiffel, has Brad wrapped around her little finger. By this point Toni has had just about enough, and she's ready to do something about it. But what? Start with this Monday's strip and stay tuned all week to see how this plays out. I can't give anything away, but I can promise you that the showdown will be epic. In the meantime, here's a tribute song from the Pixies in honor of the chilling, stylish, inimitable and about-to-be-confronted Little Eiffel.

It really is true what they say: "When all you've got is a chainsaw, everything looks like a pumpkin." Or something like that. More Halloween-y adventures all week at GoComics, this one courtesy of Soup To Nutz.

You might be tempted to think that kids using paintbrushes and cans for their tags only happens in the delightfully skewed world of feared comic legend/unstoppbable party animal Mell Lazarus' Momma.

Well sir or ma'am, if that is your real name, you couldn't be more hopelessly out of touch. You see, famed cool hunter Lazarus is so "wired in" that he's here depicted something that's only just started popping up in hipper urban back alleys across the country: "steampunk" graffiti, in which vandals eschew the convenience and supple handling of spray paint for the burdensome, time-tested methods of their scofflaw Victorian antecedents.

Expect a New York Times Style piece in about six months, but remember, you saw it here first!